MARIETTA — The Cobb Board of Commissioners on Tuesday agreed to pay Crowder Construction Company of Conyers $10.6 million to build a receiving station to handle waste at the county’s RL Sutton Water Reclamation Facility off South Atlanta Drive in Smyrna.

Cobb Water System has four treatment facilities: the Noonday Water Reclamation Facility off Shallowford Road in Kennesaw; the Northwest Water Reclamation Facility off Highway 293 in Kennesaw; the South Cobb Water Reclamation Facility off Lee Industrial Blvd. in Austell; and the Sutton facility.

The Sutton facility incinerates the solid waste that has been removed from the water system and treated, while the other three use contractors to haul it to landfills, Water System Agency director Stephen McCullers said.

McCullers said the Sutton facility will be able to accept waste from the South Cobb plant once the receiving station is built.

“Because of permitting issues and the cost of creating a whole new incineration set-up, we chose to build a receiving station at Sutton so that we could truck from South Cobb to Sutton, and if we have to, from the other two,” he said.

McCullers said the county will save more than $1 million annually by incinerating the South Cobb material as opposed to hauling it to a landfill.

It’s also more environmentally friendly to incinerate than bury the material, he said.

The facility should be complete in a year’s time.

In other business, the county bought 10 homes that have experienced multiple floodings. Seventy five percent of the $2.4 million cost is paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with the county paying $600,216.

Eight of the homes are located in Commissioner JoAnn Birrell’s northeast Cobb district.

“Under this grant, I think we’ve probably bought two or three previously,” McCullers said, noting that the county bought about 35 homes in the 2009 flood. The homes will be razed and turned to green space, he said.

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